Money, money, money

This is by no means an exhaustive look at money, but an intro that led to some good questions on Sunday evening:

Money, money, money.

“We live by the golden rule: those who have the gold make the rules”.

You can do a lot with money:
Earn it; steal it; scrounge it.
Save responsibly; hoard selfishly.
Invest ethically or unethically; gamble it away (some investments are a gamble).
Spend on self; buy things for others.
Give it away generously & joyfully; or give it stingily & begrudgingly, moaning about putting 10p in the collecting tin.

Each of these – getting, saving, spending, giving – has its own issues, so we'll briefly look at each of them in turn, and then spend more time thinking about our relationship to money and to God – after all the Bible is mostly concerned with relationships.

1. Getting money
“If you believe money can do anything, you will do anything to get money”.
I guess it goes without saying that Christians should not get money through dishonesty, theft, fraud or begging.
But of course sometimes it's not that easy – what if I work for a massive drug or health care company, and they're involved in abortions? Does this mean I can't work for that company at all?
Those kinds of questions must each be looked at carefully. No global answer.

But the Bible does give us very clear guidance about providing for ourselves through hard graft.
Some people in the church at Thessalonica were bone idle: in both 1 & 2 Thessalonians, Paul rebukes them:
In 1 Thes 1:4, he said, make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
Then, in 2 Thes 3: For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat." We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat.

This echoes the teaching of Proverbs, with its warnings to lazy students
Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!
It has no commander, no overseer or ruler,
yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest.
How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep?
A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest - and poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man.
Sorry, did I say students? I meant sluggards!

Of course, in the Bible, there's no such thing as retirement! But that doesn't mean it's a bad thing – there's nothing about cars or nuclear power either – they're all modern inventions, and we have to look for guiding principles...
Titus 3:14 Our people must learn to devote themselves to doing what is good, in order that they may provide for daily necessities and not live unproductive lives.

So, just as we're encouraged to pray for God to “give us today our daily bread”, so we should provide 'for daily necessities'.
So it's right to make sensible provision for retirement so that we won't have to sponge off others, but we shouldn't make extravagant provisions.
Which moves us neatly on to savings & investments.

2. Saving & investing

What we need to do is to keep the principle of working to provide for our daily needs alongside Luke 12:15-20
And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

So pension planning & saving are all very well so long as they are for daily necessities and not for an easy, luxurious life with no thought for eternity.
Of course this isn't easy – we don't know what the future will hold – except we do... We know that we will be with the Lord Jesus for all eternity, and that mo

One other thing – investments should be ethical.
Two types – negative – avoids putting savings into tobacco, certain kinds of armament manufacture, companies that promote abortion etc.
and positive – actively seeking out companies that promote fairness & equality etc.
Problem – what non-Xns think of as equality, we might think of as immoral...

So, we;re working hard to provide for our family and our future, but we're not building bigger & bigger barns, we're just trying to provide for the daily necessities.
But how should we spend what we earn?

3. Spending

There's only on kind of shopper in the Bible – grasshoppers!
To our possessions-obsessed world, there's surprisingly little about shopping in the NT.
Of course there was less choice in those days, but beautiful clothes & jewels were desirable.
But people must have coveted what their friends and neighbours owned, or God wouldn't have forbidden covetousness in the 10 commandments.

As ever, the Bible encourages us to put the beauty of good relationships and holiness before outward beauty.
So, in Matt 6, we're to trust our Father in heaven and not worry about clothes; and in 1 Pet 3:3 women are told, Do not let your adorning be external - the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewellery, or the clothing you wear - but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious.

So our priority is inward beauty which not only radiates a deeper and longer-lasting outward beauty, but also reflects & glorifies God's own beauty.

Some have said that we should be careful about what we spend so that we have more to give away.
But while that sounds good, it actually turns the Bible's teaching about giving on its head.
So, last in our list of what you can do with money is giving.

4. Giving
An important general principle for Xns is that we give expecting nothing in return.
Xn giving is an imitation of the grace of Christ:
For you know, says Paul to the Corinthians, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.
The Bible's teaching on giving is very straightforward to understand, but much harder to put into practice.
1. Xns give first to God – in the OT, the first-fruits of the harvest were devoted to God, and were used in the temple as sacrifices or to feed the priests who led worship.
In Mat 6:33, Jesus says, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

And Paul holds up the Macedonians as an example: they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us.

2. Xns give proportionately & generously: In 1 Cor 16:1 Paul says, 'Now about the collection for God's people: Do what I told the Galatian churches to do: On the 1st day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with his income...
Does that mean we should give 10% like the OT believers did? No.

In the NT there are no laws about giving, only principles. But most Xns would want to try to begin with 10% and then go beyond that just as the Macedonians did: In a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, egging us earnestly for the favour of taking part in the relief of the saints.

Xns give generously because it imitates Jesus' own self-giving love and grace to us. That's what the whole of 2 Cor 8 & 9 is about.

3. Xns give cheerfully:
2Cor 9:7 Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
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But I said we'd think about our relationship to money and to God – and I've not left enough time for that... so briefly...
“Money”, someone has said, “is the god of the world's leading religion.”
And it's true.
For sinful humans, the desire to have more, to own more, to buy more, are second only to the desire to eat and drink.
The whole world economy is based on the desire to increase our wealth.

So it's incredibly difficult for us as Xns not to get sucked into this way of thinking.
We are possessed by materialism, and money makes a terrible master: as Ecclesiastes says, Whoever loves money never has money enough;whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income.

So we must dethrone the god of money. And the only way to do that is to replace it – replace it with the one true God.
For, as Jesus says, No-one can serve two masters. Either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

Everyone has a god, and for most people its money – but the Lord God Almighty is a much better god – he is our eternal Father, who has loved and called us from before the beginning of time, and will continue to love and care for us for all eternity.

Let's stop serving money, and make money serve the Kingdom of God.
Let's stop worshipping money, and use our money to worship God.


Questions....